Most people who author books get caught in a trap that is hard to negotiate their way out of.

When you finish your book, you upload it to the different book-selling platforms, then you wait and pray that people will find and buy your books.

Prayer is great if you are a spiritual person.

However, action allows you to reserve your prayers for something that matters far more than money.

Taking Action

If we wait for the world to find us, we might be left waiting forever.

If you have taken the time and invested the effort to write a book that people will want to read, then it is in your best interest to take the time and invest the effort to help future buyers to find your book.

People are not going to be able to find our books, unless we are willing to stand in their paths and say, "Hey look at me!"

To be honest, this is how I view all advertising and marketing...

People are walking along their chosen paths every day, oblivious to the availability of those things they want and need.

If you don't interrupt them, they will pass you by with their nose firmly planted in their cell phone.

You must be willing to step into their path, bump into them, and start a conversation with them.

Not literally of course, but figuratively.

You must interrupt their daily activities to gain their attention and lead them to a conversation about how you can help them improve their day.

Whether you have written a nonfiction book or a fiction book, the same applies.

You must step into their path, interrupt whatever is going on in their lives in that moment, then you must make a compelling pitch for what you are offering.

With nonfiction books, you will start the conversation telling them about a problem they might have and the solution you offer.

With fiction books, you will start the conversation by creating a tease for your story that will drag them into wanting to know more about your story.

"Hey You! Pay attention to me."

Isn't This How Most Friendships Begin?

You interrupt, you chat, you find common interests, you become fast friends.

Once you have established that friendship, you can call your friends and tell them things that you would not be able to tell a stranger. You will be able to ask them to do things for you that you would never ask of a stranger.

And because you are friends, when you call, they will answer -- always... Or if they cannot answer when you call, they will call back when they can.

That is what friends do for each other, right?

Advertising Is One Option

The problem with paid advertising your book is four-fold:

1. Are you talking to the right people?
2. Are they paying attention to you?
3. Do you have enough reviews for the advertisers to actually take your money?
4. Will you make enough money from your advertisements to pay for the cost of your advertising?

Often, paid advertising is a pure gamble. There is no way to know in advance if you are going to make money or lose money on the deal.

And honestly, most book authors will lose money several times before those paid advertisements start to make financial sense.

The thing that aggravates me most about paid advertising is that I want to advertise my book on the day it launches. I don't want to have to wait until I have 5, 10 or 15 book reviews on my book!

But this is what most advertisers require.

Advertisers require me to have X number of reviews on my books before they will accept my ads, and they will expect those reviews to add up to a specific ranking before they accept my money.

I just launched my book. I don't have any reviews yet. But I need to get the word out concerning my book in order to find enough buyers to get the number of reviews I need to advertise.

It really is a chicken-and-egg quandary.

So the book advertising sites are telling me, "Come back when you can prove the value of your book."

But, I have money, and I know my book is awesome.

"Well then, come back when your customers can verify that."

LOL

If newspapers, radio stations and television stations required such things in order to advertise, they might be out of business.

But the book advertising sites persist with a bunch of silly rules designed to keep their advertising base low and their advertising rates high.

Pooh On Them!

So here is the deal.

I don't like doing business with people who don't actually want to help me find new customers for my products, period.

If I launch a new book today, I want to go to an advertiser, give them my money and my ad copy, and I want to be assured that they will promote my book immediately or within a day or two.

I don't want to have to jump through a dozen hoops just to get my book advertised.

Oh, none of your advertisers do that for you either?

Just because that is the way advertisers treat us doesn't mean that we should accept that as the only way to do things. :)

It would be different if I was willing to wait a month to get reviews for my books, before I start advertising.

It might even be different if it were not against Amazon's TOS to purchase reviews. It is against their TOS, so it is not something I am going to do.

So why should I have to wait one month or two, to get the reviews I need, in order for an advertiser to take my money?

I launched the book today! I want buyers today!

There has got to be a better way, right?

And there is...

Make Friends With Your Buyers, Before You Launch Your Book

Social media is your friend.

On social media, you can reach out to the people who will most likely want to buy your books.

You can reach out to those folks, interrupt their train of thought, and start the relationship with them now.

You can start that relationship now and begin a friendship that will last for as long as you publish books.

And if you do this part well, when you launch a new book, you can tell your friends about your book and they will click through to buy your book now.

A friend of mine writes under the pen name, Leighann Dobbs.

She has done this. She currently has 3,500 FaceBook friends who pay close attention to what she posts on her FaceBook Page.

Between books, she is making friends and building those relationships.

On launch day, she is asking her friends to buy her books.

As a result, she often sells 1,200 to 3,000 copies of her book on launch day.

And do you know what is more awesome than that?

As soon as her friends rush to buy her book, Amazon will take notice of the frenzy of sales and they will advertise her books too -- the current title and the older titles.

Leighann is one of the people I know who has the capacity to launch a best seller -- every single time she releases a book!

And do you know what is even better than that?

She doesn't have to pay for advertising to get thousands of sales and dozens of reviews within 48-72 hours of launching a new book!

Yes, there is a better way to advertise your books, and it will not require you to spend actual money on advertising.

And even more interesting, Leighann and others can set this up and run it in less than five minutes a day!

FaceBook and other social media is the best tool you can use to promote your books.

Get acquainted.

Bill Platt has helped writers and book authors learn how to market their writing online for 15 years. His latest training guide is titled "Easy Social Book Promotion", and in it, he is going to teach you how to make the best use of FaceBook and other social media platforms to build your audience and grow your book sales.

Improve Your Writing

"Strengthen Your Verbs"

You need to convey your meaning clearly in every sentence. In many instances basic verbs such as "to be" (is, was, are, were) can be replaced with more "advanced" verbs that make the sentence more interesting to read. Remember - verbs can make or break a text. You want your verbs to carry the reader's momentum forward, so use dynamic verbs that accurately capture the action you are trying to convey.

Ex: "The elephant was loud."

Better: "The elephant trumpeted loudly."

Both sentences have the same word count (four words) but the second sentence more animatedly conveys the action.